For people who have become unable to freely move their extremities due to damage of muscles, nerves or brain, a rehabilitation of moving extremities is effective in order to recover extremity movements or to improve paralysis. A therapist can constantly stay by a trainee's side during a rehabilitation. However, therapists are limited in number, and to reduce burdens on therapists, implements and apparatuses which allow trainees to independently work on their rehabilitation are in demand. Embodiments thereof are described in Patent Literatures 1 to 4.
An apparatus intended for trainees with hemiparetic upper extremity is described in Patent Literature 1. This apparatus controls a left grip-to be held in a trainee's left hand and a right grip-to be held in the trainee's right hand so as to make the left grip and the right grip position symmetrically, and moves a paralyzed hand in conformity to the moves of a healthy hand, thereby moving the healthy hand and the paralyzed hand in the mirror symmetry.
With this apparatus, there is a premise that a paralyzed hand is transitively moved entirely, however, there is a finding that depending on the condition of a paralyzed hand, voluntary movement recovers better by exercising, triggered by spontaneous movement of the paralyzed hand. (e.g., Non-Patent Literature 1). Contrary to this, an apparatus that transitively moves a trainee's arm by using a biological signal that occurs when the trainee moves his/her arm as a trigger, is disclosed in Patent Literatures 2 to 4.